A Ghoul's Tale
by Mrs. Muddlewait
Summary: Laura is nineteen, and certain that what she's just fallen into is love.


_**A/N:** This is isn't really an update. I just fixed a couple of copyediting glitches, which were brought to my attention by an astonishingly thorough and conscientious reviewer. Many, many thanks to Thor for his eagle-eyed proofing! _

_

* * *

Columbus, Ohio  
1987_

When me and Michelle were together, we used to go to meetings a lot. Usually we went to the Social Justice Action Group, because Michelle said they had a broader sense of purpose than most of the other ones. I thought it was kind of confusing. They talked like gay rights was the same as South Africa was the same as recycling. Michelle liked that. She liked stuff all mixed together, like casseroles and anthologies and boxes of all different kinds of chocolates.

Me, I was really happy when I found out that there were candy stores that kept all the different kinds of jelly beans in different jars, and you could buy a pound of whatever kind you wanted. Plain. Just those. You could eat them straight out of the bag in the dark and not worry about getting a coconut one or a green one by mistake. When Michelle and I broke up, she said that I wasn't creative enough for her.

Anyway, we used to go to the Social Justice Action Group, and sometimes we went to this coffeehouse called Common Grounds that had rainbow flags in the window and cool posters on the wall. Michelle drank herbal tea and told me how the workers who grew the coffee beans didn't get paid anything. I said it was Fair Trade coffee, and showed her the poster where it said that the company was trying to be responsible. She said it was corporate propaganda, and I ought to know better. Michelle and I had a lot of fights like that.

There was this one woman who came to the coffeehouse sometimes. Her name was Sophia. Michelle said that that was probably a Pagan name, like Astarte or Mossyrock, but she didn't have Goddess jewelry and she didn't smell like sandalwood. Usually she talked to the older people, the organizers and the university professors and some guy from Legal Aid; she had some kind of day job, and so she never went on demonstrations. She didn't really like demonstrations anyway, she said. Any time anybody came up with a neat slogan, she frowned and said _It's__ really a lot more complicated than that_. Michelle said she was negative.

Anyway, me and Michelle broke up right after Christmas. On my nineteenth birthday she went out with some friends of hers to go down to the Short North and look at the art. She said she was going to call me, but she figured I wouldn't be interested in all that cultural stuff anyway, and we could do something over the weekend instead. I told her I helped with the self-defense classes on the weekend. I'd told her that before, twice, and I said so. She said some stuff I hoped she didn't mean, and I knew she probably did mean it, because I meant the stuff _I _said. Finally she hung up on me.

I spent most of January wondering whether she'd think I was desperate if I went over to her place to give her her green shirt back. I spent the rest of January writing her a letter about how much I missed her , and then I tore it up. I spent most of February realizing that I had spent the whole quarter either missing Michelle or working out in the dojo trying to forget about her. I was supposed to be writing papers for all my classes, and I didn't write them, and I was going to flunk out, more or less.

I called my mom and she told me not to come home. She said that if I was grown up enough to choose my own lifestyle (meaning Michelle, I think) I was grown up enough to take care of myself. My dad agrees with whatever my mom says, and I really didn't want to go back to Van Wert and have people look at me funny because I was the only gay person they ever saw up close.

So I was still in the dorm for a while, but they were going to throw me out soon. I'd planned to move in with Chris and Peter, these two guys from the Action Group, because their roommate left and they said I could have his room for a third of the rent. Michelle would have said that moving in with them would be "male-identified," but I didn't care any more what Michelle said and I don't know what "male-identified" means; I flunked my Women's Studies exam.

I'd been going to the Action Group meetings, partly because I figured she'd show up for some of them and I could give her her shirt back and maybe we could have a real conversation. But she never did. So I started being there by myself, which was kinda cool. Michelle used to try to explain things to me while other people were talking. Without Michelle explaining stuff to me, I figured most of it out on my own. Michelle was wrong about some of it anyway.

We were demonstrating against South Africa. We put up shanties made of those wooden things they use in warehouses; when the police came to tear them down we linked arms and started singing instead. It took four of them to haul me off. I liked it -- wrestling the wooden things into place and then sitting there and digging in my feet until four big cops picked me up. It was a lot better than writing letters and organizing stuff. _Strong back, weak mind_, that's me.

Somebody from the Action Group came around to bail us out. After that, I didn't have anyplace I wanted to be so I stayed late at the coffeehouse. Sophia stayed late too and started to talk to me. We were listening to the news. There was something about Operation Rescue, and it pissed her off. She said it used to be lots worse -- girls used to have babies and murder them all the time, like that girl in all the papers who had her baby at the prom. She said that the conservatives want everybody to think all the problems are new problems and there used to be some perfect time when everything was good. She said that was dumb and a lie.

She got really intense when she said that, and she forgot to drink her coffee. We sat there and talked for a long time, or I guess she talked and I listened. I'd never really listened to her before. Her voice was deep and she said all the words by themselves instead of running them together. Sometimes she used big words. Mostly she made small words sound like big words. It was a lot more fun than listening to Michelle.

She wasn't pretty in the round soft way Michelle was. She was skinny, not just athletic, but skinny, and really pale. But she moved like an athlete, or maybe a martial artist—like she'd thought about every movement before she made it. When she wasn't moving she was really still. I never saw her fidget or stretch or scratch or sneeze or blink. When she tapped her pen on the table or something, it was like she did it because she _decided_ to. A friend of mine who was a bouncer at a bar said you could tell how old women are by looking at their hands. I tried that with Sophia—her hands were skinny but smooth; I guessed she was about twenty-five. Maybe thirty. It was hard to tell.

She liked to talk about books and stuff like that. Once I asked her where she was from, and she said "England," and went back to talking about Karl Marx. When I asked her why she didn't have an accent, she said that she left there when she was a little girl. The idea that she was ever a kid was weird. You know those people that you can't match with their baby pictures no matter how hard you try? Sophia was one of those.

Right after that she asked me about me. I told her about Van Wert, and my mom, and my crush on my friend Jolene that got me in lots of trouble when I was in the eighth grade. Sophia listened, and she didn't move at all. So I told her about how I played basketball and soccer and how that stuff and my karate classes were the things that kept me from going nuts when I went to the consolidated high school where everybody came from some sucky rural slum. I told her how I wanted to join the Army or something, except for … you know. And finally I told her about going to OSU. My English class was in a computer room, and you had to use the computers for everything, and I'd never used one before, and the book was about things I'd never heard of, and I went back to my room and waited for all my roommates to leave and I cried.

And I told her about meeting Michelle at some lesbian-student thing, and how Michelle was older and had been there and told me it was going to be okay. Michelle had a car with feminist bumper stickers and an apartment off-campus and whole shelves of books. She was a vegetarian and she cooked stuff like tempeh and complicated things made out of weird vegetables when she got the chance. I wanted to be like Michelle—she seemed to have the kind of life that I didn't know anybody had. She had this calendar on her wall, with pictures of pagan goddesses and all the months were drawn as moons, in a big spiral. All the months of my life had come in grids, measured out and chopped up. I wanted to live like Michelle did. I said I had thought I was in love.

When I said that, she closed her eyes a little and smiled. "I know about that," she said quietly. "I've made that mistake myself." I wanted to ask her what she meant, but I thought she'd think it was a nosy kind of question. I didn't want to make her mad at me. So I just nodded a little, calm and serious, and she reached out and clasped my hand. Her hand was really cold.

About then the coffeehouse guy wanted to lock up. It was midnight, or one in the morning, or something like that. She offered to give me a ride back to the dorm. I said yes. Her car was a little one, but nice. It was clean; she wasn't one of those people who eat french fries while they drive. It looked new. It smelled new, too. She pushed a tape into the tape player. It was something classical, something I didn't know. It sounded like the soundtrack for a movie with lots of gray water and storm clouds in it. Sophia didn't say much.

When she pulled the car up in front of Morril Tower, I leaned over to hug her. For a tiny moment she looked startled, almost frightened; maybe I imagined it. I don't think anybody else would have noticed it. But she _did_ hug me. She smelled a little odd; very clean, and a little like lavender. Then I said good night and went inside. That night I wondered whether she liked girls and whether it would be dumb to get involved with her if she did.

I dropped by the coffeehouse later that week just to see if Sophia was there. She wasn't there at seven, but she was there at nine; I guessed that whatever she did meant she worked late. She was sitting there reading a big hardcover book and holding a cup of coffee in both hands. When I went in, she looked up and smiled at me. It was that funny kind of flirtatious smile that doesn't show any teeth. She took her coat off the other chair so I could sit down.

She asked me how my finals were, and I looked down into my lap and I mumbled. She asked me about karate, and I told her; if we'd been alone somewhere, I would have shown her the new kata I was learning. She didn't say anything about Michelle; that was good. Most of the people I knew kept asking me where Michelle was, as if it was weird that I showed up anywhere without her to take me. Sophia listened intently, nodding to tell me to go on. She leaned forward, resting her chin on the tops of her folded hands. She looked happy.

"It's actually warm outside," she said. "Why shouldn't we walk somewhere?"

"It's not that good a neighborhood," I warned her. With her new car and her gold jewelry and her expensive tweeds, I didn't think she was the sort of person who wanted to walk around campus in the dark.

"We're pretty fierce women," she said. "I think we can take care of ourselves."

I believed her. The idea of being part of a _we_ with Sophia was good. Nervous and fluttery, but good.. We walked down to High Street, and crossed it, and walked around the Oval for a while. We went down by the lake. She said it looked Romanticist, on its best nights. I didn't know what she meant, but her face looked sad and pale, and so I put my hand on her shoulder. She reached up and touched my face very, very gently. I realized suddenly that I was a lot taller than she was, and I wondered why I'd never noticed that before.

I had a couple buttons on my jacket. One of them said "Women hold up half the sky," and the other one said "Hate is not a family value." Sophia touched that one, tapped it with her fingernail. She pulled away, sat down on one of the concrete benches, and waited. I went over and sat down beside her. I suppose if I were as short as she was, I'd be happier talking sitting down too.

"Tell me about your politics, Laura", she said. "What is it that brings you to those meetings week after week?"

I started to say something about what Michelle told me once, and Sophia stopped me. "No", she said. "Not what Michelle said. What does _Laura_ say?"

I was nervous as hell, sitting there in the dark beside the lake with Sophia's gray-blue eyes staring at me like that. In the light of the emergency lamps and the full moon, her face was pale—not like the face of a sick tired person but like the face of a marble statue. She was almost scary.

I guess I looked scared, because she leaned forward a little and put her hand on my arm, real gently. "I'm interested in what you think," she said. Leaning forward like that she didn't look so weird any more. She was still scary, though. No, that's not right. I was still nervous. That was it. I liked the way her voice sounded. I wanted her to talk to me, to tell me things I didn't know and make them make sense. Instead she wanted me to talk to her. I guessed that would be okay too.

_I _rambled for a while, and I didn't think I made any sense. I guess that most of it comes down to hate, I said, what I'm really scared of is when the people in charge of stuff – like the police and the judges and like that – when they hate people for no good reason. Like prejudice. You know. Like how the police used to beat up gay people outside the bars, or when a woman got raped the judges used to say she deserved it. Like that. Sometimes I wish –and I know this is bad—sometimes I wish it were easier. Like with Nazis, where you knew who the bad guys were and you were supposed to fight them. That's kinda what I think, I said. I let the sentence fade away, the way songs on the radio get quieter and quieter before they stop.

"Interesting," she said. "I like the way you choose your causes, Laura, and I like the way you serve them. You're no armchair radical – it's a shame that our time is so lacking in banners under which to fight."

And she kissed me. Softly and gently, with her hand reaching up to my shoulder. She tasted like toothpaste. Her mouth was cold, as though she'd been crunching ice. I kissed her back, tenderly, then deeply. Passionately, I guess a romance writer would say. There was a sudden taste of something salty, almost coppery. _I must have bitten her tongue_, I thought, panicking, thinking about diseases.

She held me there, her hand on the back of my neck, her lips pressing hard against mine. That kiss felt almost electrical, almost intoxicating, like drinking cold water when you're terribly thirsty on a very hot day. I was dizzy when I opened my eyes; it seemed weird that I was sitting on a bench. I'd thought that I was flying. Or at least floating. Or at least lying down. Something like that.

I leaned my head against Sophia's shoulder. The evening was chilly, but my face was sweating. My knees shook. She was so quiet I could hear the way I was breathing. She put one arm around me. Friendly, not romantic, really. After a few long moments, she stood up. She said, "May I offer you a ride home?" and I didn't know whether she was saying _we're done now_ or _your place or mine_.

She started walking in the direction of her car without really looking back. Of course I followed her. That night I couldn't sleep, which seemed strange. I felt like we'd made love for hours. I should have been tired. Instead I paced around the room, full of energy. It was like I'd been drinking coffee, or maybe eating sugar, except that it was a body kind of thing. I felt like jumping.

I spent that night doing stretches and katas in my room; when I did go to sleep, I woke up around four and lay there staring at the numbers on the clock, wondering why she kissed me and whether she was in love with me. I went back to sleep sometime around noon.

I went back to the coffeehouse that weekend. Before I went I had my hair cut, so that it didn't fall into my eyes the way it used to. I thought about wearing makeup, but I didn't. I did wear some little silver earrings with amethysts on them; they were the dressiest thing I had that wasn't some "sweet little outfit" my mom had given me before she found out I was a dyke.

I waited at the coffeehouse for hours, wondering whether she was going to be there. I drank three cups of herbal tea, because if she wasn't there I wanted to be able to sleep. She arrived there around ten. Her hair was down, in a long tangled braid, and she had old clothes on. Her face looked less pale, like she'd been out running in the cold or something. She pulled out a chair with her foot and sat down in it. She sat there and looked at me as though she was going to say something. Instead she watched me thoughtfully, as though waiting to say something.

The guy behind the counter came out and gave Sophia a cup of peppermint tea. She sat there for a while with her hands wrapped around the cup as though she were cold. She didn't make any slurping noises like everybody else does. I wished I could do that. I realized I was staring at her, and that seemed rude. So I pretended I was interested in the newspaper that was lying on the table. I'd been reading it when she came in.

"You have a long walk home," she said, "and it's chilly out. May I offer you a ride?"

I wasn't sure whether she meant that she would come home with me, or whether she meant that she wanted to take me home and leave me there. If she wanted to be with me, she had to have someplace better than a dormitory room that I would have been sharing with four other girls if it weren't spring break. I wondered what it was that I did wrong.

She drove me back to the Tower. She pulled into one of the visitor spots and parked there. She wouldn't have had to do that if she was just dropping me off.

"Do you want to come in? Unless you've got something else, I mean, I don't want to bother you." It sounded stupid. Why the hell would she want to come in? It was a dormitory room, she was at least ten years older than me, it was the middle of the night. She had to have a real apartment, even a house, somewhere to go back to. She had that day job. She probably had a partner or something, and she'd only kissed me by mistake.

"Thank you," she said. "I'd love to."

The frayed orange carpet in the hallways was embarrassing, and my roommates had pictures of horses and teddy bears up on the wall. One of them had a pink flowered bedspread. Mine was black.

Sophia laughed a little at that. "Austere tastes," she said. "I admire that." I had to ask her later what _austere_ meant, and she was really nice about it, not the way Michelle would have been. She sat down on my bed. There wasn't really anyplace else to sit, since one of the chairs was covered with some of my laundry and I was sitting on the other one.

"Do you want me to come sit there? With you?" I knew I sounded nervous. I was. I didn't know why.

"If you like." She didn't sound nervous at all.

When I sat down beside her, she stood up. She put one little white hand under my chin and lifted my face so that my eyes met hers. She stroked my face and played with my earlobes, and then she bent down and kissed me. She tasted like peppermint, but also like something coppery and frightening. She put her hands on my shoulders, gently. She was helping to hold me up. She bit her lip. I saw her do it. A little drop of dark red blood appeared, and even though I knew it was dangerous I let her press her lips against mine again. As I did that, I realized that her strong little hands were stroking my neck and my hair; I couldn't have refused to kiss her again if I'd been trying.

Most wonderful things aren't as good the second time. This was better.

We ended up lying next to each other. Sophia had a big gray sweater on, almost as big as a dress. The neck was stretched out a lot; what I saw of her body under it was skinny and white. You'd think that as pale as she was, you could see the veins like blue lines. I couldn't with her. I don't know why. I thought about putting my hands under it and touching her. Instead I touched her sweater, following the knitted lines with my fingers, touching the gray wool where it covered the small shapes of her breasts.

She grasped my wrists hard. Her hands were stronger than mine. Stronger than anybody's. She held my wrists in her hands and kissed me right under the ear. She kissed me hard, nibbling and then biting. I tried to reach up and touch her face or her breasts, but she wouldn't let go of my hands. I couldn't imagine pulling loose. She kissed me again and again. I felt sleepy and weak after that. She stroked my hair a while after that before she stood up, put on her boots, and left.

I slept very late the next morning. She had left me a note, on my roommate's little green notepad.

"Laura – Common Grounds, tonight at nine. Sophia."

Her handwriting was funny. I'd seen someone do calligraphy once that looked like that. I wondered what one of those books about personality and handwriting would say about her.

Of course I went.

She was waiting at the same table she sat at before. She had her book with her, but she wasn't reading it. She was sort of holding on to it and looking out the big window. I suppose she was waiting for me. She wasn't drinking anything.

"I would prefer more privacy," Sophia said. Outside, it was starting to snow. She reached into the pockets of her jacket and took out a pair of leather gloves. They were old-fashioned, vintage maybe. She pulled them on carefully, straightening the soft leather over each finger. When she buttoned them at the wrists, she was looking down at what she was doing. She wasn't looking at me. "Let's go," she said. Her voice was cold. I wondered whether I'd offended her by watching her hands so closely.

"I'm sorry," I said, but she had already opened the door and was standing outside waiting for me. I followed her to her car and got in. I wondered if I should say something, but she turned the radio on, kind of loud. I figured that meant that she didn't want to talk. I looked out the window instead, wondering what she wanted privacy for. I hoped she wanted just to be with me, but she was so quiet I was sure she was angry.

She drove through a neighborhood I wouldn't walk through, then through one I wouldn't drive through with the doors unlocked, then through one I wouldn't have driven through in a tank. The houses were old ones that looked like rich people used to live in them once. Most of them had been cut up for apartments or covered over with aluminum siding, and they all had prickly green bushes out front. Sophia pulled the car into the alley and into a concrete block garage behind one of the houses.

The garage door was heavy. The motor of the door opener made a loud growling sound as it pulled the door up. The garage was very clean inside, but the outside was really dirty and covered with grafitti. When we got out, she locked three different locks. I figured that if I had to park a new little car here, I'd lock it up too. I wondered why she had come here at all.

The house was a big brick one. The windows were boarded up with black painted plywood. The trees and the prickly bushes were all overgrown, and there was trash caught in the bushes and the grass. There was a chain link fence – rusted and old but still strong. The gate was locked too. She unlocked it without saying anything.

She unlocked the back door of the house, too, and walked in. I couldn't imagine any reason why she would have keys to this house. I had no idea what she was doing. I trusted her. She flipped a switch inside the house and lights came on; I saw them through the door she was holding open for me. The walkway in the back yard was crumbling slate, and it was slippery. I didn't want her to have to wait for me. I ran.

For a tiny second I was scared of that house. I wondered in the back of my mind whether maybe she was going to do something to me. That was a really stupid thought. No wonder she was probably mad at me. I trusted her. But I was still frightened, and I wanted her to explain.

She didn't seem to want to say anything. She walked in and let me follow her, and then she locked the door behind me. There were four locks. I counted them.

From the boarded-up windows and everything outside, it looked like the house would be dirty and empty. It was cold inside, but it smelled like lemon oil and fresh paint and it was tidy and inhabited. Maybe she was renovating it and the new windows hadn't come yet or something. There were lights on in the big room at the front of the house.

It didn't look like a living room really; there was no couch and no TV, just some chairs and a table. Some of the chairs were the big ones like the ones in old movies. There were books and papers stacked up all over the place. I almost stepped on a big one that was just laying open in the middle of the floor. It was really old; inside all the S's looked like F's. That old. I wondered what a book like that was doing where people could step on it.

She came back in and I put the book down on the table. I didn't want her to think I was looking at her stuff.

"It was on the floor," I said. "I was just picking it up."

She looked at me like she didn't understand. "Thank you," she said, kind of puzzled. She sat down in one of the big chairs. "Please," she said, "come in and sit down."

I moved some books and some old newspapers off the other big chair and sat down in it.

She wasn't sitting like a statue the way she did sometimes. She had this ball of string in one hand and was kind of winding it up. She wasn't doing anything with it besides that. I guess she was nervous. I was nervous too. The house made me that way. The boarded-up windows were part of it, and it smelled funny. Not bad, just funny – not like a house. More like a library, maybe, or a room at the university. Like nobody lived there.

"Laura," she said, "There are some things I have to tell you."

This was going to be about her partner, or her husband, or something. Or maybe it was that she had hundreds of books and antique furniture and I just didn't fit in with what she wanted. But she was going to tell me to go away. I was pretty sure. I felt like crying, except I hadn't cried where people could see me since I was five. I wondered if there was something I could say to maybe change her mind.

She sat there looking at me with those weird eyes. "Laura," she said, "The world is a very strange place. Stranger, I think, than you have imagined. There's something I need to tell you. I ought to have told you earlier, but it . . . would not have been a good idea." She paused a long time between those words, and looked at the string in her hands like it was really interesting. I wished she'd tell me why she was mad at me and get it over with.

"Laura," she said, in this quiet voice like what she was going to say was an important secret, "there are vampires."

"What?" That was a weird thing to say. I had heard people say stuff like that – the psychic-energy people, the ones with the crystals and pentagrams. And Sophia did have a Pagan name, and she did have that amber jewelry on. I heard Michelle call somebody a vampire once. She meant that the guy was driving her nuts and bothering her. I didn't _mean_ to bother Sophia. I started to say so, but she held her hand up, like _let me finish_, so I did.

"More to the point, Laura, the stories – the folklore, the novels and movies – those have some basis in fact. There are some powerful, immortal people who, ah, … well, who need the blood of the living to sustain themselves. Some of them are very influential – they control a great deal of wealth and power, and many of them do not …" Another long pause. She was winding the string up into some kind of tangle. "… do not have much regard for human life and human liberties. Some do. But not all."

I didn't know what I was supposed to say to that. She said it like she was nervous, but she said it like it was true. She said it the same way she said that stuff about welfare reform and rape laws – like you talk about something serious and real. I didn't think she was kidding, and I couldn't imagine that serious low voice from somebody who was crazy. I thought maybe I was supposed to say something, like _yeah? _or _okay _or maybe _how come you're telling me?_ but she sounded almost like she was giving a speech and I didn't want to interrupt her. So I just looked at her instead and waited for her to say something else.

"I'm one, Laura," she said.

I don't think anybody knows what you're supposed to say to _that_. I put my hand up to my neck where she nibbled me that last time. I was thinking about the bites on the girl's neck in _Dracula_, even though I hadn't even seen a hickey on my neck when I brushed my hair that morning.

"I am telling you this," she said, "because I would like your help."

"Okay." I said. I meant it like a question –_help with what?_ – but it came out sounding like _sure_. It sounded really calm and reasonable, the way it would sound if somebody hadn't just told me she was a vampire. I was thinking she wanted to drink my blood, like she must have done before, and I was scared. But only a little.

That wasn't it, though. "I sleep during the day," she said, "and I need someone to watch the house, as security. There are some other things, too, that I need help with – mostly things I have difficulty doing myself during the nights. You'll live here – I'll pay you well, you understand, and take care of the expenses – and look after things. And in return, I will give you my blood."

"I thought…" My throat was dry. I had thought she wanted me to go away. Or maybe just _use_ me. Instead she wanted me to live with her, to stay with her, to _be_ with her. "I thought the blood thing was supposed to be the other way around. Like what you did to me."

"I did appreciate that," she said as though it wasn't what was really important. "Yes, your blood – or human blood in general, I should say – sustains me. Mine would do considerably more for you. A living person who drinks vampire blood becomes much stronger, much faster, much tougher – and ceases to age. You would, in effect, live forever. You've had it twice now. Did you enjoy it? "

I closed my eyes and swallowed hard, wanting. My voice came out all whispery. "Yes."

"And so," she said, "this arrangement would be agreeable to you? You are willing to help me in exchange for what I can offer you? This is something you would like?"

I couldn't even swallow, this time. I nodded instead, slow and serious.

"Then we are agreed," she said. She folded her right sleeve back a little and then she bit her own wrist, hard. I watched her do it, and for a second I saw the points of her fangs. Her blood was dark red. That weird coppery-scary smell was there, and it smelled better than the cinnamon bun place at the mall, better than anything.

"Come here," she said, and her voice was gentle and soft. "Please." The blood trickled from her opened vein into the palm of her hand. She held it out to me.

The smell made me drunk and my knees wobbled. When I got near her chair, she stayed sitting down. I thought I could bend over maybe, like kissing her hand, but I was so dizzy and so nervous that I knelt on the floor instead. I kissed her bleeding wrist and drank from it.

I closed my eyes and held her wrist with both of my hands. It was like making love – you know, that scary moment where you're halfway between needing and having and both are strong enough to make your whole body shake. Or maybe like that other moment when you're running and all your muscles hurt from the work and then suddenly the hurting stops and instead you feel like flying. It was like that, except that those things are moments, and this went on forever. It was so beautiful that I cried. Sophia reached down with her free hand and wiped the tears away. Her touch was cool and soft. I loved her.

I loved her even when she put that hand on my shoulder and said "That's enough, Laura." I was still holding on to her arm, but she pulled herself loose like I was a baby holding on to a grownup's finger. She was really nice about it, though; she sat there a while longer, stroking my hair with one pale little hand. I leaned my head against her knee and wanted to go to sleep.

It was a long time before she said anything. "Let me show you the house," she said. She stood up, and then held out a hand to help me. I hoped for a moment she wanted to hold my hand while she showed me, but she let go as soon as I was standing. I tried not to look disappointed. That would probably hurt her feelings.

Most of the downstairs was the living room and what I guess used to be the dining room. It wasn't dark, like I thought it would be. She had lots of lights and she kept them turned on. Some of them were brass lamps and one of them was a big cut-glass thing on the ceiling. Both rooms had rugs in them, big piles of thick old-fashioned rugs. There were bookcases built into the front room, and they were full. There was a fireplace there, too, but it was empty. In front of it there was a funny looking cloth thing with peacocks on it. In the other room there was a big old table that she used for a desk, and more books. Sophia told me not to touch them.

The kitchen was kind of small and really old-fashioned, even though it was clean. There was a little bit of stuff on the counter – a whole loaf of bread, a new jar of peanut butter, a bag of apples, a thing of paper plates and plastic only things in the refrigerator were a little bag of cut-up vegetables like at salad bars and an unopened carton of milk. There wasn't anything else in there, not even the little stuff you find in every fridge where people live -- no mustard, no salad dressing, no olives, no baking soda. That made the whole thing seem real. Of course Sophia wouldn't have that stuff. She didn't need it. I don't know what I thought she'd have in there. Bat blood, or something. I wondered who the food was for.

She saw me looking in the empty fridge. "I know there's not much – I don't have any cooking equipment, and I didn't know what you'd like. There's grocery money in the drawer beside the sink, if you want to shop for yourself, go ahead."

The door to the basement stairs was in the kitchen. I thought the basement would have a dirt floor and some empty jars or something, or else maybe a coffin, like in the movies. Instead it was clean and painted and full of even more bookshelves and a couple big chairs. There was a big steel door in one wall. "Here," she said, "this is my room."

She opened the door a little, the way people do when they want you to take a quick look but not to go in. She didn't have a coffin in there, either, and I felt stupid for thinking she might. The room wasn't really a bedroom either, though. It was almost like a cell – no windows, just a bed and a dresser with pictures on top. All the pictures were of people. One was a painting of a man wearing George Washington clothes and a wig. Some were really new, like the photo of the skinny guy in the black graduation robe with a velvet thing hanging down in the back. I wished I could ask her about the people, but she was starting to walk away, so I didn't.

We were on the second floor of the house before I realized that her bed was narrow, big enough for only one person. I guess sleeping vampires like their privacy. Upstairs there was a bathroom. I thought it would be empty, like the kitchen, but it wasn't. There was a shower curtain and little bottles of lavender bath stuff and soap. On the sink there was a toothbrush and a thing of toothpaste and a box of hairpins.

There were a few other rooms up here. Someone had swept them and cleaned them a little, but they hadn't been painted or anything. Sophia said the floors in the room with the blue wallpaper were unsafe.

There was a big room at the end of the hall upstairs. "This one is yours," she said. Inside it was white and clean and the windows weren't boarded up. It looked kind of like a room in a dorm, except for the big rag rug on the wood floor and the blue-and-white curtains. There was a dresser with a mirror and a big chair and a bed with a blue cover on it. This room was warmer than the rest of the house, because of the little heater that was sitting on top of the dresser. Sophia said that the furnace didn't work.

She looked at her watch. "I've got work to do. You should get some sleep; I'd like you to be awake and alert while the sun's up." She pointed to the alarm clock on the table beside the bed. "The sun rises at half past six; meet me downstairs at half past five and I'll show you the security precautions. All right?"

I wanted to say something. I didn't know what. "All right," I said. That wasn't it.

"Good night," she said. "Sleep well." She turned around and went downstairs.

I undressed in the room that she had said was mine. It would be less empty, I figured, when I got my stuff from my old room in the Tower. I hung my clothes over the chair and climbed into bed. The sheets were cold and the bed was hard and narrow. There were some noises outside, and a whispery kind of music from downstairs. Nothing very loud.

I was lying there alone in the dark when I realized I was lonely. I wished she were with me, lying beside me the way she had in my room that one time. I felt guilty about wishing that, though. She had her reasons – good reasons – for what she did. She had given me this room because she wanted me to have it. I was doing what she wanted, I told myself, sleeping here in this cold little bed, alone. Doing what she wanted would have to be enough.

I whispered in the darkness, pretending she could hear me. _Sophia, I love you.._ I said it to myself over and over, until I could sleep.


End file.
